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Iraq sets March 7 for election

Baghdad, December 9, 2009

Iraq set a long awaited date for a general election next year, but later pushed it back by one day to March 7, amid political wrangling typical of the squabbles which have already delayed the vote.

Naseer Al Ani, President Jalal Talabani's chief of staff, told Reuters the presidency council had picked the new date late on Tuesday, after an earlier date of March 6.

The date was announced a few hours after a series of car bombs ripped through Baghdad, killing 112 people and wounding 425, a brutal reminder of the threat still posed by the Sunni Islamist insurgency six and a half years after the US invasion.

The election date reduces risk to a US plan to end combat operations in Iraq next August ahead of full withdrawal by 2012.

"The new date is March 7. We don't want to upset anyone, we want this to go smoothly," Al Ani said, without elaborating on the reason for the last-minute change.

Tareq Jawher, adviser to the parliament of Iraq's semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan, said Kurds had rejected the March 6 date because it coincided with the anniversary of a 1975 treaty between former dictator Saddam Hussein and Iranian Shah Reza Pahlavi that Kurds say marginalised them.

March 7 comes after a constitutional deadline for the poll, but is still just before Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's mandate expires, thus reducing the risk of a political vacuum that could undermine Iraq's young democracy and fuel instability.

The ballot was initially expected in mid-January, but Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, a Sunni Arab, on November 18 vetoed parliament's election law. He argued it did not provide enough representation for refugees, many of whom are Sunni.

Hashemi then threatened to veto a revised law that did not address his concerns and instead allocated more seats to Kurds. Lawmakers, cajoled by US and UN officials, late on Sunday agreed to a last-minute compromise on the distribution of seats, and Hashemi dropped his objections. – Reuters